Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

From:

Richard Stallman

Subject:

Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

Date:

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 19:01:27 -0500

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> I can think of a half dozen projects at the University of
> Pennsylvania (my university), VeLLVM, Ironclad C++, and my own work
> on C safety being just three, where no one used GCC as a platform
> specifically because of the more open architecture in LLVM.
This is very unfortunate, but I don't know that anything can be done
about it.
LLVM is a real technical step forward, yoked to a step backward in
defending our freedom. If it were just the former, I would be
enthusiastic for it. However, the latter is more important, so we
must do our best to resist it, even temporarily.
> The long term result of all of this may very well be to do exactly the
> opposite of what you want -- to convince compiler researchers that
> LLVM is the only serious platform for their work,
Why do you say "may very well be"? According to your previous
paragraph, they are already convinced, so there is no way to
make that any worse.
and even worse, to
> convince developers in general that free software is too hard to use
> and that non-free software is the way for them to get their work done.
I cannot follow you there. Which non-free software are you talking
about? Could there be a misunderstanding here?
LLVM is free software. It is undefended by copyleft, ideal for Apple
to make it proprietary. That's why it is a big step backwards.
Nonetheless the version that the researchers work on is free. So I
don't see how they could derive the conclusion you suggest.
You think to make me stop resisting by telling me resistance is
useless, that what I am defending is lost. At the same time, you are
telling me that my efforts to defend it really endanger it. (Those
two can't both be true.)
What this says to me is that you might be exaggerating how bad things
are in the aim of convincing me.
I will read the second part of your message later.
--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.